Alone in Aven Armand Cave, France

What does it feel like to be in a vast cave, full of stalactites and stalagmites in heights that reach 30 m, by yourself with just the drip drop of water as the only noise? Magical.
Aven-Armand Cave is situated in south-east France and is home to the biggest known stalagmite in the world - over 30 m in height.
 I always have liked caves, they are so eerie and otherworldly, quit unlike anything else you can experience in the world. But out of all the caves in the world that I have been to, Aven-Armand was the most impressive for me. Hundreds of stalagmites tightly packed together in a kind of a forest, the shapes and sizes of them varying wildly from tiny young ones to huge ones resembling a
lot of large mushrooms growing on top of each other. Their 'mushroom' like shape is due to the height of the cave that allows the drops of water to accelerate before they hit the stalagmite with a splash. In wet years there are more water drops, therefore more splashes and the stalagmite forms wider, in dry years it becomes very narrow, giving it the distinctive form.

Unlike other caves that I have been to, where we wonder from a chamber to a chamber, each of them varying in size, in Aven-Armand there is just one chamber that you can walk through. But this chamber is large in size - 45m high, 60m wide and 110m long. The tour only allows half an hour there but it would be very easy to spend three times that just wondering among the stalagmite forest.
We were lucky to have turned up at a very quiet period, there were tour buses for the tour before ours and the tour after, but we were the only ones to have turned up for the 12:00 one. Each tour has a guide so the three of us had a guide just for ourselves, even though she could not speak a word in English and we only know a few words in French, therefore could not explain to us what we are looking at, but she did point out the most interesting objects. The most bizarre  moment was when the guide turned the lights out so that we would feel what it was like for the first explorers to enter the cave in the dark with only a tiny streak of light coming in from the top of the cave where there is an opening to the world

above.
 When Louis Armand 'discovered' the cave in 1897, there were a fare few skeletons here - the unfortunate people who had either fallen through the opening or had been pushed in. Many of them did not die instantly so they lied there in the dark, not knowing of the stunning beauty that is around them, the only thing they could see was that tiny ray of light, and that was the last thing they ever saw.
Luckily, nowadays it is very easy and safe to get in and out of cave, and despite its remoteness, it is well worth it.